Candle Flame Begins Fire That Burns House

HAMPTON — A woman who left a candle burning in her Buckroe bungalow Sunday night awoke this morning to find her sofa ablaze.

Gloria Jean McCormick, 33, tried unsuccessfully to smother the fire with a blanket before escaping with her two children. "We were just lucky to get out alive," she said.

McCormick, who is unemployed and a welfare recipient, said she had used the candle to light her living room because Virginia Power cut off the electricity at her rented home at 117 Richmond Ave. on Friday.

McCormick said she had fallen "two or three months behind" in paying her electricty bill but intended to pay the more than $500 she owed today.

A Virginia Power spokesman said McCormick was five months behind on her bill and had failed to make an agreed upon payment on March 1.

"I just happened to wake up, and when I saw the flames I jumped up and woke up the kids," McCormick said. She said her children, 9 and 14, had slept with her in her bed Sunday night. She is not married.

McCormick said she and her children, dressed in their nightclothes and barefoot, raced into the living room, where the mother tried to smother the flames with a blanket.

"It just kept on blazing, getting worse and worse," she said. She said her children "were running around trying to help me put out the fire, but it was getting so worse I told them to go outside."

McCormick said she woke up a neighbor who reported the fire.

Battalion Fire Chief E. L. Hale said flames were shooting out the front door and window of the one-story cinderblock house when firefighters arrived. The fire spread to a bedroom; the flames melted the vinyl siding of a house next door, at 256 N. Second St., he said.

Hale estimated the loss to the building, owned by Jesse Butts, and contents at $8,000.

The American Red Cross is assisting the family with food and clothing.